LUTHER was teaching both in the academic hall and in the church, when he was interrupted in his labors. In 1510, or according to others in 1511 or 1512, he was sent to Rome. Seven convents of his order were at variance on certain points with the vicar-general. The acuteness of Luther's mind, his powerful language, and his talents for discussion, were the cause of his selection as agent for these seven monasteries before the pope. This divine dispensation was necessary for Luther. It was requisite that he should know Rome. He had always imagined Rome to be the abode of sanctity.

Setting out from Wittenberg, he traveled south across the Alps; but he had scarcely descended into the plains of the rich and voluptuous Italy, before he found subjects of astonishment and scandal. The poor monk from Germany was entertained in a wealthy convent of the Benedictines on the banks of the Po, in Lombardy. The revenues of this monastery amounted to thirty-six thousand ducats; twelve thousand were devoted to the table, twelve thousand were set apart for the buildings, and the remainder for the wants of the monks. The splendor of the apartments, the richness of dress, and the delicacy of food, confounded Luther. Marble, silk, luxury in all its forms - what a sight for the humble brother of the poor convent of Wittenberg! He was astonished and silent; but when Friday came, what was his surprise at seeing the table spread with an abundance of meat. Upon this he resolved to speak. "The Church and the pope," said he, "forbid such things." The Benedictines were irritated. This was a reprimand from an unpolished German. But Luther persisted, and perhaps may have threatened to make these irregularities known, therefore some thought the simplest course would be to get rid of their importunate guest. The porter of the convent forewarned him of the danger he incurred by a longer stay. He accordingly quitted this monastery, and reached Bologna, where he fell dangerously ill. Some have attributed this to the effects of poison; but it is more reasonable to suppose that the change of diet affected the frugal monk whose usual food was bread and herrings. The sickness was not unto death, but to the glory of God. He again relapsed into the sorrow and dejection so natural to him. To die thus, far from Germany, in a foreign land - what a sad fate! The distress of mind that he had felt at Erfurt returned with renewed force. The sense of his sinfulness troubled him; the prospect of God's judgment filled him once more with dread. But at the very moment that these terrors had reached their highest pitch, the words of St. Paul, "The just shall live by faith," recurred forcibly to his memory and enlightened his soul like a ray from heaven. Restored and comforted, he soon regained his health and resumed his journey towards Rome, expecting to find there a very different manner of life from that of the Lombard convents. He was impatient to efface, by the sight of Roman holiness, the melancholy impressions left on his mind by his sojourn on the banks of the Po.

After a toilsome journey under a burning Italian sun, at the beginning of summer, he drew near the seven-hilled city. His heart was moved within him: his eyes sought after the Queen of the world and of the Church. As soon as he discovered the Eternal City in the distance - the city of St. Peter and St. Paul, the metropolis of Catholicism - he fell on his knees, exclaiming, "Holy Rome, I salute thee!"

Now in Rome, Luther, the Wittenberg professor stood in the midst of the eloquent ruins of the consular and imperial city - of the Rome of so many martyrs and confessors of Jesus Christ. Here had lived that Plautus and that Virgil whose works he had carried with him into the cloister, and all the great men over whose history his heart had so often beat with emotion. He beheld their statues, - the ruins of the monuments that bore witness to their glory. All that glory - all that power had fled; his feet trampled on dust! At each step he called to mind the sad presentiments of Scipio shedding his tears as he looked upon ruins - the burning palaces and tottering walls of Carthage, and exclaimed, "Thus will it one day be with Rome!" "And in truth," said Luther, "the Rome of the Scipios and Caesars has become a corpse. There are such heaps of rubbish that the foundations of the houses are now where once stood the roofs. It is there," added he, as he threw a melancholy glance over these ruins, "it is there that once the riches and the treasures of the world were gathered together." All these fragments, against which his feet stumbled at every step, proclaimed to Luther that what is strongest in the eyes of man may be easily destroyed by the breath of the Lord.

But with these profane ashes were mingled other and holier ones: he recalled them to mind. The burial place of the martyrs was not far from that of the generals and conquerors of Rome. Christian Rome with its sufferings had more power over the heart of the Saxon monk than pagan Rome with all its glory. Here was the place where that letter arrived in which Paul wrote, "The just shall live by faith." He was not far from Appii Forum and the Three Taverns. Here was the house of Narcissus - there the palace of Caesar, where the Lord delivered the apostle from the jaws of the lion. Oh, how these recollections strengthened the heart of the monk of Wittenberg!

But Rome at this time presented the warlike Julius II filling the papal chair, and not Leo X as some distinguished German historians have said, doubtless through inattention. Luther often related a trait in the character of this pope. When the news reached him that his army had been defeated by the French before Ravenna, he was repeating his daily prayers: he flung away the book, exclaiming with a terrible oath: "And Thou too art become a Frenchman . . . Is it thus Thou dost protect Thy Church? . . ." Then turning in the direction of the country to whose arms he thought to have recourse, he added: "Saint Switzer, pray for us!" Ignorance, levity, and dissolute manners, a profane spirit, a contempt for all that was sacred, a scandalous traffic in divine things - such was the spectacle afforded by this unhappy city.

Because it was the period of the feast of St. John, Luther heard the Romans repeating a proverb current among them: "Happy the mother whose son performs mass on St. John's eve!" – "Oh, how I should rejoice to render my mother happy!" said Luther to himself. Margaret's pious son endeavored to repeat a mass on that day; but he could not, the throng was too great.

Fervent and meek, he visited all the churches and chapels; he believed in all that was told him; he devoutly performed all the holy practices that were required, happy in being able to execute so many good works from which his fellow-countrymen were debarred. "Oh! how I regret," said the pious German to himself, "that my father and mother are still alive! What pleasure I should have in delivering them from the fire of purgatory by my masses, my prayers, and by so many other admirable works!" He had found the light; but the darkness was not entirely expelled from his understanding. His heart was converted; his mind was not yet enlightened: he had faith and love, but without knowledge. It was no trifling matter to emerge from that thick night which had persisted for so many centuries.

Several times Luther repeated mass at Rome. He officiated with all the unction and dignity that such an action appeared to him to require. What affliction seized his heart after he witnessed the sad mechanism of the Roman priests, as they celebrated the sacrament of the altar! They laughed at his simplicity. The priests at an adjoining altar, to one at which be ministered, had already repeated seven masses before he had finished one. "Quick, quick!" repeated one of them, "send our Lady back her Son"; making impious allusion to the transubstantiation of the bread into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. At another time Luther had only just reached the Gospel, when the priest beside him had terminated the mass. "Passa, passa!" cried the latter to him, "make haste! have done with it at once."

His astonishment was still greater when he later found in the dignitaries what he had already observed in the inferior clergy. He had hoped and expected better things of them.

It was the fashion at the papal court to attack Christianity. You could not pass for a well-bred man, unless you entertained some erroneous or heretical opinion on the doctrines of the Church. They had endeavored to convince Erasmus, by means of certain extracts from Pliny, that there was no difference between the souls of men and of beasts. Some of the pope's youthful courtiers maintained that the orthodox faith was the result of the crafty devices of a few saints.

Luther's coming from the German Augustines procured him invitations to numerous meetings of distinguished ecclesiastics. One day he was at table with several prelates, who displayed openly their buffoonery and impious conversation. They did not scruple to utter a thousand mockeries, thinking, no doubt, that he was of the same mind. Among other things, they related, laughing and priding themselves upon it, how, when they were repeating mass at the altar, instead of the sacramental words that were to transform the bread and wine into the flesh and blood of our Saviour, they pronounced over the elements this derisive expression: Panis es, et panis manebis; vinum es, et vinum manebis. (Bread thou art, and bread thou shalt remain; wine thou art, and wine thou shalt remain.) Then, they explained that they elevated the host, and all the people bowed down and worshiped it. Luther could hardly believe his ears. His disposition, one of animation and even gaiety in the society of friends, was serious whenever sacred matters were concerned. The mockeries of Rome were a stumbling block to him. "I was," said he, "a thoughtful and pious young monk. Such language grieved me bitterly. If 'tis thus they speak at Rome, freely and publicly at the dinner table, what would it be if their actions corresponded to their words, and if all - pope, cardinals, and courtiers - thus repeat the mass! And how they must have deceived me, who have heard them read devoutly so great a number!"

Luther had thought to find the edifice of the Church encompassed with splendor and strength, but its doors were broken down, and the walls damaged by fire. He witnessed the desolation of the sanctuary, and drew back with horror. All his dreams had been of holiness, - he had discovered profanation.

The disorders without the churches were not less shocking. "The police of Rome is very strict and severe," said he. "The judge or captain patrols the city every night on horseback with three hundred followers; he arrests every one that is found in the streets: if they meet an armed man, he is hung, or thrown into the Tiber. And yet the city is filled with disorder and murder; whilst in those places where the Word of God is preached uprightly and in purity, peace and order prevail, without calling for the severity of the law." . . . "No one can imagine what sins and infamous actions are committed in Rome," he said at another time; "they must be seen and heard to be believed. Thus, they are in the habit of saying, ‘If there is a hell, Rome is built over it’: it is an abyss whence issues every kind of sin."

Thus Rome made a deep impression upon Luther's mind; it was increased erelong. "The nearer we approach Rome, the greater number of bad Christians we meet with," he said, many years afterward. "There is a vulgar proverb, that he who goes to Rome the first time, looks out for a knave; the second time, he finds him; and the third, be brings him away with him. But people are now become so clever, that they make these three journeys in one." Machiavelli, one of the most profound geniuses of Italy, but also one of unenviable notoriety, who was living at Florence when Luther passed through that city on his way to Rome, has made the same remark: "The strongest symptom," said Machiavelli, "of the approaching ruin of Christianity [by which he meant Roman Catholicism] is, that the nearer people approach the capital of Christendom, the less Christian spirit is found in them. The scandalous examples and the crimes of the court of Rome are the cause why Italy has lost every principle of piety and all religious feeling. We Italians," this great historian continues, "are indebted to the Church and the priests for having become impious and immoral." Luther, somewhat later, was aware of the great importance of this journey. "If they would give me one hundred thousand florins," said he, "I would not have missed seeing Rome!"

This visit was very advantageous to him in regard to learning. Like Reuchlin, Luther took advantage of his Italian residence to penetrate deeper into the meaning of the Holy Scriptures. He took lessons in Hebrew from a celebrated rabbi, named Elias Levita. While in Rome he partly acquired that knowledge of the divine Word, under the attacks of which Rome was destined to fall.

This journey was important to Luther in another respect. Not only was the veil withdrawn, and the sardonic sneer, the mocking incredulity which lay concealed behind superstitions revealed, but the living faith that God had implanted in him was powerfully strengthened.

He at first gave himself up to all the observances which the Church enjoined for the expiation of sin. One day wishing to obtain an indulgence promised by the pope to all who should ascend on their knees what is called Pilate's Staircase, the Saxon monk was humbly creeping up those steps, which he was told had been miraculously transported from Jerusalem to Rome. While he was performing this meritorious act, he thought he heard a voice of thunder crying from the bottom of his heart, as at Wittenberg and Bologna, "The just shall live by faith." These words twice before struck him like the voice of an angel from God. They now resounded unceasingly and powerfully within him. He rose in amazement from the steps up which he was dragging his body: he shuddered at himself; he was ashamed of seeing to what a depth superstition had plunged him, therefore he fled far from the scene of his folly.

This powerful text had a mysterious influence on the life of Luther. It was a creative sentence both for the reformer and for the Reformation. It was in these words God then said, "Let there be light! and there was light."

Frequently a truth must be presented many times to our minds in order that it may produce the due effect. Luther had profoundly studied the Epistle to the Romans, yet the doctrine of justification by faith taught in it had never appeared so clear. Now he comprehended that righteousness which alone can stand before God; now he received for himself from the hand of Christ that obedience which God of His free gift imputes to the sinner, as soon as he raises his eyes with humility to the crucified Son of Man. This was the decisive epoch of Luther's inner life. The faith which had saved him from the terrors of death became the very soul of his theology. It was his stronghold in every danger; the principle which gave energy to his preaching and strength to his charity; the foundation of his peace, the encouragement to his labors, his comfort in life and in death.

This great doctrine of a salvation proceeding from God and not from man was not only the power of God to save Luther's soul; it became in a still greater degree the power of God to reform the Church: an effectual weapon which had been wielded by the apostles, - a weapon too long neglected, but taken at last, in all its primitive brightness, from the arsenal of the omnipotent God. When Luther rose from his knees on Pilate's Staircase, in agitation and amazement at those words which Paul had addressed fifteen centuries before to the inhabitants of that same metropolis, - Truth, till then a melancholy captive, and fettered in the Church, rose also to fall no more.

Here it is well to listen to what Luther says: "Although I was a holy and blameless monk, my conscience was nevertheless full of trouble and anguish. I could not endure those words –‘the righteousness of God.’ I had no love for that holy and just God who punishes sinners. I was filled with secret anger against Him: I hated Him, because, not content with frightening by the law and the miseries of life us wretched sinners, already ruined by original sin, He still further increased our tortures by the gospel . . . But when, by the Spirit of God, I understood the words, - when I learned how the justification of the sinner proceeds from the free mercy of our Lord through faith . . . then I felt born again like a new man; I entered through the open door into the very paradise of God. Henceforward, also, I saw the beloved and Holy Scriptures with other eyes. I perused the Bible, - I brought together a great number of passages that taught me the nature of God's work. And as previously I had detested with all my heart these words, ‘the righteousness of God,’ I began from that hour to value and to love them, as the sweetest and most consoling words in the Bible. In very truth, this language of St. Paul was to me the true gate of Paradise."

When, on solemn occasions, Luther was called to confess this doctrine, he always recovered his enthusiasm and rough energy. "I see," observed he at an important moment, "that the devil is continually attacking this fundamental article by means of his doctors, and that in this respect he can never cease or take any repose. Well then, I, Doctor Martin Luther, unworthy herald of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, confess this article, that faith alone without works justifies before God; and I declare that it shall stand and remain forever in despite of the emperor of the Romans, the emperor of the Turks, the emperor of the Tartars, the emperor of the Persians, - in spite of the pope and all the cardinals, with the bishops, priests, monks, and nuns, - in spite of kings, princes, and nobles, - and in spite of all the world and of the devils themselves; and that if they endeavor to fight against this truth, they will draw the fires of hell upon their heads. This is the true and holy gospel, and the declaration of me, Doctor Luther, according to the teaching of the Holy Ghost . . . There is no one who has died for our sins, if not Jesus Christ the Son of God. I say it once again, should all the world and all the devils tear each other to pieces and burst with rage, that it is not the less true. And if it is He alone that taketh away our sins, it cannot be ourselves and our own works. But good works follow redemption, as the fruit grows on the tree. That is our doctrine - that is what is taught by the Holy Ghost and by all the communion of saints. We hold fast to it in the name of God. Amen!"

Thus Luther found what had been overlooked, at least to a certain degree, by doctors and reformers, even by the most illustrious of them. In Rome God gave him this clear view of the fundamental doctrine of Christianity. He had gone to Rome, city of the pontiffs, for the solution of certain difficulties concerning a monastic order: he brought away from it in his heart the salvation of the Church.

The Life and Times of Martin Luther by J.H. Merle D'Aubigne - Index Page
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